The Man Behind the Pristine Dell Diamond

Head groundskeeper Nick Rozdilski talks dirt, weather, and how to resurrect a baseball field in 34 days.

Rosie Ninesling

Published: September 25, 2018

Photo by Jess Williams

When Nick Rozdilski tells me that he has “a relationship with [grass],” I try not to laugh. “It’s almost like a girlfriend,” he says. “You work so hard on it.” He’s not joking. He takes his work as the head groundskeeper for the Round Rock Express that seriously. And it’s paid off. He recently was awarded a Presidential Commendation for turf management from the Pacific Coast League due to his excellent maintenance of the Dell Diamond playing field in 2018.

To us who aren’t experts in baseball fields, they don’t seem that difficult to take care of. Water the grass. Mow when needed. Maybe sometimes rake the dirt? Little did I know that there is a complete science to turfs. Rozdilski majored in agronomy, the study of soil, at Delaware Valley University in order to understand and cultivate the field at Dell Diamond. He’s also a member of the Sports Turf Managers Association, a nonprofit with more than 2,600 members involved in outdoor field management.

It’s unlikely, however, that during his college education he was taught what to do if a hit TV show asks to transform your field into a post-apocalyptic horror scene, which is what happened in March when AMC picked Dell Diamond to film season 4 of Fear the Walking Dead. The transformation from baseball stadium to a base camp for survivors of zombie attacks involved chemically killing all of the grass. Considering Rozdilski’s previous comment about the field being his girlfriend, I could only imagine his initial reaction.

“The initial thing was shock,” he says. Manipulating the field in this way “kills you a little bit, but you know … they need [it to be done].”

Rozdilski’s job isn’t just about keeping the grass green. It’s about creating whatever field the Dell Diamond needs—dead or alive. And just 34 days after the filming, Rozdilski had the field in perfect condition again for the Round Rock Express’ opening home game. Last week the Round Rock Express announced that they will be re-joining the Houston Astros in 2019, leaving their Triple-A affiliation with the Texas Rangers.

Though “soil is pretty much everything,” it’s not the only thing that Rozdilski has to consider. As groundskeeper, he is constantly monitoring the weather. Droughts are good for baseball because then the amount of water the grass receives can be controlled. Rain, on the other hand, can pose a problem, especially if the soil doesn’t drain correctly. And since Austin weather, as we all know, is fickle and ever-changing, Rozdilski’s job is nowhere near easy. However, to him it’s completely worth it.

Rozdilski grew up playing baseball in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and remembers playing catch with his dad, a former high school baseball coach, in their backyard after dinner. In his senior year, Delaware Valley University visited his high school to advertise their programs. One of the programs that caught Rozdilski's eye was turf management. Wanting to know more, he visited a professor at the university.

“I was kind of clueless about all of it,” he says, “so the professor told me to work on a golf course that summer. And if I liked it, I should enroll in turf management.” He took his advice.

He started in golf but chose to work on baseball fields as opposed to any other sport. “I already knew the field,” he says. “There are times that you have to take a step back and appreciate where you are and what your job is. There’s so much that goes on here that you’re constantly jumping from one thing to the other, so if it’s ever one of those times that you have the stadium to yourself, like on a late Sunday night or Sunday afternoon, you take one breath and look around.”

Since graduating, his home has always been stadiums. Rozdilski, now 35 years old, has been working at the Dell Diamond for 3 years. "Baseball [had been] on the radar since the beginning," he says. "And that's really what I wanted to pursue."

I imagine the scene: Rozdilski on the field all alone on a Sunday night, surrounded by stadium lights, standing on top of hours upon hours of labor and effort. Though I thought it was funny when he first told me he had a relationship with the grass, I think of it as more than just a humorous remark.

Whenever someone cares deeply about their work, a relationship is always formed between them and what they create. For Rozdilski, he creates more than just a field; he creates an environment in which so many events are attended, so many balls are caught, and so many memories are made. This is his first Presidential Commendation, and it’s obvious just how deserving he is of it. For him, the grass can always be greener.